Resident Evil: Afterlife - An awkward step forward...

Afterlife fixes some of the franchise's problems, moving us closer to the source material.

After seeing Resident Evil: Extinction, the third series installment that hit theaters in 2007, I was left... disenchanted. Due to some questionable decisions, I had a number of issues/complaints with where the film franchise a whole stood by that flick's conclusion. Let's run them down, shall we?

1) Um, the entire freaking world is destroyed?! What the hell? In the games, it never gets any worse than the destruction of Raccoon City. This is too far off the mark from the source material.2) As I've previously explained, Alice is far too powerful at this point. Telekinesis, super strength/speed/agility, a clone army... it's ludicrous and she's basically untouchable, not to mention hard to relate to on a personal/emotional level.3) Characters from the games would occasionally show up (Claire, Wesker), but would bear little-to-no resemblance to their game counterparts in either physical appearance or personality. So why even bother? 4) In addition, after THREE movies with increasingly large budgets, we still had an unfortunate dearth of creature variety...5) ...and we now also had a desperate lack of SETTING variety. The massive desert that had seemingly covered the Earth? Bo-ring.6) Nobody explained what the hell happened to Jill Valentine or Angie Ashford after Apocalypse. They're just MIA.

Some of the above gripes seem almost impossible to fix, since you can't damn well retcon a couple of those very easily. However, of these six nagging issues, Resident Evil: Afterlife addresses FIVE, and does so pretty satisfactorily. That's a surprisingly strong turnaround, and I applaud writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson's efforts to repair the series he built.

Happy news: The action is still visually arresting in good-old 2D.

Yes, this is an enjoyable movie that's got fanservice for the RE geeks and some compelling twists to its storytelling. However, there are times when Afterlife feels so focused on fixing the mistakes laid in the past that it's not paying enough attention to its present. I feel a bit like Ian Malcolm in The Lost World...

Hammond: Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again!Malcolom: No, no - you're making all new ones!

Yes, it's time for a new list of issues. Luckily, it's shorter than the old one, and I consider these gripes far less monumental than the previous list.

1) Characters seem dumber now. In earlier films, characters were more suspicious of trouble and quicker to be on edge whenever they came across something new or unexplained. In this movie, people are always walking into obvious traps or missing obvious hints, failing to make some pretty clear connections that scream "HEY - THIS IS BAD NEWS."2) We can afford to cut down on the excessive slow-mo. Shit, this thing would probably be 15-20 minutes shorter if we just ran the whole movie in normal speed.3) Yes, we have more creatures taken from the games, yet no attempt is made to explain what the hell they are or why they're here. (To be fair, you could probably explain everything with a quick "It's another Umbrella bioweapon experiment," so maybe this isn't strictly necessary.)

HAI GUYZ! I BAK FRUM SILENT HILL! WIF SOOVENEERS!

That's really all I can complain about, though, and the first one is the only serious annoyance.

Where would I put this movie in the pantheon of the series? Probably third - I still have a soft spot for a number of moments in Apocalypse that can keep it in second, and I love the first one unendingly. They'll probably never reach the heights of the original again now that this franchise is better known for over-the-top action than anything so grounded, claustrophobic and spooky as that first flick. This is what we have now, though. The series has transitioned into a globe-hopping big-budget action extravaganza, and for what it is, it's pretty entertaining.

One more list for the road. The best things I can say about Afterlife are...

1) I intend to own it on DVD.2) I'm genuinely looking forward to the next movie.

Neither of those were true after Extinction. Kudos.

In 2007, Milla expressed interest in being phased out of this franchise in favor of a new lead. Is Claire Redfield the future of the franchise, then? Because I'd be totally fine with that.